


Go Put On A Red Shirt

by on_my_toes



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Star Trek: Into Darkness Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 10:30:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/810555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/on_my_toes/pseuds/on_my_toes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s just a few words. A casual order from their captain. But somehow when Kirk tells Chekov to head down to engineering Sulu feels his stomach lurch and his heart constrict and a primal fear grip him so tightly that it is suddenly hard to breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Go Put On A Red Shirt

“Go put a on a red shirt.”

 

Sulu can think of several moments that have stopped his heart. The day his brother ran out in front of a truck, in the split second before the driver spotted him and slammed the brake. The moment they almost let the Enterprise get sucked into a black hole. The first time Chekov knocked on his door in the middle of the night, trembling with fear and sweat and sorrow, and Sulu was so sure that he had been fired or somebody had died until Chekov croaked out the words that will haunt him forever: “I couldn’t save her.”

 

It’s just a few words. A casual order from their captain. But somehow when Kirk tells Chekov to head down to engineering Sulu feels his stomach lurch and his heart constrict and that same primal fear grip him so tightly that it is suddenly hard to breathe.

 

Kirk is talking to him. Sulu concentrates on his face, but really all he is hearing is the sound of the blood rushing to his ears, all he is seeing is the sight of Chekov shrinking into himself as he walks out of the bridge.

 

 _Acting captain?_ Sulu knows he is supposed to nervous about this. He registers the information, and exchanges a few words with Dr. McCoy, even walks toward the chair, but all he is thinking about is Chekov, somewhere in a part of the ship that is far and unfamiliar to him, replaced by a person who might as well be a stranger.

 

He is working autopilot. Everything is fast and pulsing, and he hears himself speak with confidence the he doesn’t possess, and address the crew on the bridge with a coolness that doesn’t belong to him.

 

“Remind me never to piss you off.”

 

Sulu laughs uneasily. Something is going on down below, and he doesn’t like that Chekov is a part of it. He has a feeling about this, an ominous and unshakeable one. Chekov doesn’t make mistakes. Whatever has happened down there isn’t his fault, and if he hasn’t found a way to fix it by now, there is something terribly wrong.

 

The next hour is a blur of terror and uncertainty. It is impossible to stay in his seat, impossible to focus, but somehow he is listening to the chaos and plotting out escape routes and anticipating impossible take-offs even with Chekov’s panicked, breathless voice coming in through the console. Every word he utters sounds more strained than the last, and Sulu is gritting his teeth and gripping his controls and wishing he could shake Kirk by the shoulders, because who would send a _kid_ down to be in charge of dozens of human lives during a mission as critical as this?

 

Okay. Okay, he’s not a kid. Hasn’t Chekov spent the last few years convincing him of that? But still, he is two months shy of even being able to legally drink in San Francisco, most kids his age are paying hobos and upperclassmen to buy them beer and Chekov is in charge of the functioning and survival of an entire starship full of people with minimal training from a notorious _drunk_. What was Kirk thinking?

 

And then—and then—just as he predicted, just as he knew it would, catastrophe strikes. There’s a tear in the hull, and Sulu doesn’t even need to ask to know where it is.

 

“Ensign Chekov,” one of the bridge crew is barking into the console. “Ensign Chekov, do you copy?”

 

There isn’t a response. Sulu’s knuckles are white, curled into his palms.

 

“Communication is down in engineering, somebody get him back on line.”

 

 “Ensign Chekov? Ensign—”

 

Suddenly the bridge fills with screams: they finally get a connection through to engineering, and that is the only sound that comes through the line, is screaming. The hysterical, hopeless kind of screaming, and Sulu doesn’t have to be there to know that this is the sound of death. He shuts his eyes, just briefly, imagining red shirts and streaming faces getting sucked out of the breach into the oblivion of space.

 

Before Sulu can even fully process the horror of what is going on down below, the entire comm lights up like a Christmas tree, blaring warnings of significant damages and inactive shields and devastating power losses. Sulu is frozen at his console, listening to the screams, the screams that rattle between his ears even long after someone has the sense to turn the communication line so they can focus on what is directly in front of them: Earth, fast approaching and unmercifully about to fry them in her own atmosphere.

 

He can tell by the puckered, panicked expressions on people’s faces that the danger is severe and imminent. But Sulu’s eyes are still peeled on that console, listening for a scream he recognizes, selfishly praying and hoping and _demanding_ to whatever higher power that he let everyone die, let them all die if it means sparing Chekov, if it means sparing the one good and untainted thing left in the godforsaken institution that is Starfleet. He clenches and unclenches his fists, trying to stay outwardly calm for the crew’s benefit, because that is what Chekov would want. Hell, it is what Chekov is probably doing, as he swears in Russian under his breath and runs up and down the deck like a madman. He probably isn’t even thinking of Sulu at all. Chekov is like a machine when it comes to his work, driven and enduring and clever, all up until the point when it’s over and done and he comes crawling to Sulu with a muddled heart full of regret for all the things he doesn’t have the power to change.

 

Let this be one of the things he has no power to change, Sulu hopes. Let him live. Let him live through this and Sulu will never ask for anything again, at least until the next time Chekov is in peril—let him be selfish about this and get away with it.

 

“No word from Ensign Chekov?” a voice on the bridge yells over the commotion.

 

It feels like they are mocking him. Intentionally reminding him of his throbbing panic, of the swelling sensation of fear and unfounded grief that he is feeling for something that may or may not have even happened.

 

Sulu smacks a switch on the comm. Technically it is none of his business, and he has no business clogging the communication lines, but he has to hear Chekov’s voice. And he has to believe that if Chekov heard him on the comm—heard _him_ , not some faceless, inconsequential voice coming through his speaker—that he would snap out of his stupor, that he would do anything he could to reply and let Sulu know he was alive.

 

“Chekov?” Sulu barks into the comm. Nobody is paying him any attention on the bridge. He gets nothing but static in response. “Pavel,” he tries, his voice lower, more urgent. “Pavel, are you there?”

 

A few loose, barely audible screams fuzz through the line, and then nothing more.

 

Sulu feels an impossible kind of coldness in his bones. His hands are shaking, or maybe it’s the ship, barely able to steer itself in a straight line. His eyes are vacant, watching the oscillating madness on the bridge, barely able to contribute until Scotty summons Spock and their first officer goes running off the bridge and everyone wordlessly turns to Sulu, waiting for him to take the chair, to take initiative and look calm and in control.

 

 _Go put on a red shirt_. How many people are dead? Because people are dead. That much is evident. Now that he is sitting in the captain’s chair and has a clearer view of the console he can see the extent of the damage, can see the irreversibility and inevitability of casualties.

 

Uhura receives some kind of message that the rest of them don’t hear and bolts off the bridge, following Spock. Sulu suddenly is furious her, with a visceral and irrational kind of rage. It is all that he wants in the world to go tearing out of the bridge right now, to stop at nothing until he reaches the destroyed deck where Chekov may or may not still be breathing, but he doesn’t have that kind of luxury. He has to be here, steering the ship, leading them onward into an uncertain and unpredictable landing as a madman with superpowers bent on revenge pursues them.

 

Sulu looks just briefly to his left, and then to his right. They are all waiting on him to do something. To have a plan, to call out an order, to do something other than bury his head in his hands and scream.

 

He shakes his head, just once, coming back to himself just as they’re about to hit Earth’s atmosphere. Whoever has replaced Sulu at the console isn’t doing half as good of a job as Sulu could with keeping the ship steady, but they’re alive and they’ll stay in the air and that’s all he can ask for now, isn’t it, now that there is nothing left to ask.

 

“Steady, steady.”

 

The voice is small and chiding and barely above a murmur, but Sulu’s head snaps up with enough intensity that his neck reels from the shock of it. He sees mousy brown hair and a slight frame in a red shirt bent over the navigation console.

 

 _Chekov_.

 

Sulu lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding for an hour. Chekov doesn’t turn around, doesn’t offer him any small smile or token of apology, but it is better that way. Sulu doesn’t want Chekov to turn around—doesn’t want him to see him like this, strung out and red-eyed and desperate in his relief, not even feeling an ounce of remorse for the rest of the crew.

 

They’re asking Chekov to beam Khan up or beam Spock down and he is muttering one of the hundreds of apologies he has made that day for things that aren’t his fault as he fiddles with the console, biting his tongue in concentration in that unself-conscious way of his. Sulu watches and the relief of his presence, of his wholeness and imperfection, is almost crushingly beautiful. He thinks he cannot bear to feel it one second longer.

 

And he won’t. Because he has a ship to command, with a disappeared captain and a disembarked first officer and the world’s most terrifying science experiment on the loose in San Francisco. He grits his teeth and deliberately turns his head away from the navigation console, waiting for action, waiting for whatever comes at them next.

 

* * *

 

 

It is a long time before they are allowed to leave the ship. Everybody on board is questioned extensively, before they so much as receive a medical examination or even a meal. Chekov is let go before Sulu, and once Sulu is released he rushes out of the hanger, convinced that Chekov is waiting for him where they’ve docked the ship, but the Russian is nowhere to be found.

 

First he checks Chekov’s quarters. It’s a good two miles from the dock but he walks quickly, past all the carnage of broken buildings and broken people, seeing it without _seeing_ it. He climbs the three floors up to Chekov’s room and knocks on the door and says, “Pavel, open up, it’s me,” before the boy could possibly have enough time to get up and answer the door.

 

Nobody answers. Sulu knocks again, knowing that of course Chekov isn’t home, that he would never ignore Sulu pounding on his door like this, not after what just happened, and yet there is a small voice of doubt reminding him that Chekov didn’t wait for him at the dock today, so something has shifted, something has changed. He walks another two floors up to his own quarters and presses his palm against the scanner to let himself in, half-expecting that Chekov has wormed his way in there by overriding the security and is now waiting for him perched on a chair with a triumphant little half-smirk, but Sulu’s quarters are empty, too.

 

Finally he pulls out his PADD and calls Chekov directly, starting to grow more frantic and annoyed by the second. Chekov doesn’t pick up, and by this point Sulu isn’t particularly surprised. Sulu wanders back out in the street. The furious part of him says for _get_ Chekov, leave him be if that’s what he wants, why should he give a crap if Chekov can dismiss him this easily?

 

And the terrified part of him says that if Chekov has disappeared this thoughtlessly, he is in trouble. Possibly the kind of trouble that Sulu can’t fix.

 

He doesn’t know where else he should go, where else he should look, so he starts wandering the streets, or at least what is left of them. He finds himself kicking debris out of his way as he goes. The sound of screaming and sirens and mass panic has died down by now. It is a morbid thought, but the city of San Francisco is nothing if not prepared for events like this, as they have been since the day Starfleet located its largest academy and headquarters here.

 

They are explorers. At least that is what Sulu learned in his classes, at least that was the motto beaten into his brain as he endured dozens of anthropology classes as his hands twitched for a console, for a mathematical equation, for something his brain could wrap around and hold on to. They are to send messages of peace and unification throughout the galaxy.

 

And now—now. Now there is war on the horizon, and Sulu’s mouth is dry at the thought, knowing that the crew of the Enterprise is among the most bright and most capable and above all, most able to persevere. And because of this it seems highly unlikely that they won’t be right in the thick of things when war is eventually declared.

 

He doesn’t want this. He wonders if he should resign, and the immediate thought in his head is _yes_ , and the second thought is _Pavel_.

 

Chekov would never leave. Not for anything, not even for war. And even in moments like this, when it is clear Chekov has run off somewhere with no intention of being found, Sulu can never leave him behind.

 

He rounds a corner toward a more torn up street, and sees actual victims that have yet to get picked up by medicopters. There are ambulances hovering up and down the block and the lesser injured, people with broken bones and concussions who probably were not in immediate danger of death when the first round of medical teams ran through, are sitting white-faced on the street or crying and holding each other.

 

Sulu should want to help, but he doubts his ability to. He is exhausted and preoccupied and besides, the medical staff is practically outnumbering the patients. Sulu would only get in the way.

 

He is turning his head to leave when he catches another slight commotion down a side street, where there is only one ambulance hovering by a few people. That’s when he spots Chekov: all skinny and wiry and somehow still running up and down the block, between the victims and the ambulance, taking orders from the emergency response team and delivering items back and forth between them.

 

Sulu doesn’t even realize his legs are moving until he is halfway there, and the speed of his own pace shocks him. Nobody looks up as he passes, or even acknowledges him, and when he reaches Chekov the boy is crouched down by a woman cradling her arm and saying something in Russian that Sulu doesn’t understand while she nods back at him.

 

“What the _hell_.”

 

Chekov’s head snaps up.

 

“Hikaru,” he says, his voice quiet and hesitant. He blinks up, perceiving Sulu’s heated expression, the furrowed scowl and the slits of his eyes and the redness in his cheeks. “You are angry with me.”

 

Sulu opens his mouth and finds himself spluttering. He’s not angry. He’s relieved, he’s grateful, he’s mortified—he’s _furious_.

 

Chekov murmurs something to the woman as the medical team takes her away, and then stands on his feet to face Hikaru. “I’m sorry,” he says, but Sulu knows by the miserable look on his face that he is not apologizing for what Sulu is angry about, that he is issuing a blanket apology for something else.

 

The sirens on the ambulance wail and grow further away as it takes off, leaving them alone in the street. Chekov is staring at him, his eyes manic and afraid by Sulu’s silence. There is a streak of red blood soaked down the side of his face, and he is still wearing the greasy, torn up red shirt that Kirk issued him the day before.

 

Sulu grabs the shirt, grabs it by the scruff of the neck and raises it up to his face. Chekov splutters in surprise but doesn’t protest, shifting his weight to the front of his feet to compensate.

 

“I thought you were _dead_ ,” Sulu hisses.

 

Chekov nudges himself out of Sulu’s grasp, and Sulu lets him go, because he isn’t that guy, not the kind of guy that Chekov fears.

 

“Well. I am not,” Chekov answers in a clipped voice, staring out toward the street. His lips pucker like he has tasted something sour, and he turns to Sulu and says, “The keptin—he is—he was—”

 

Sulu can’t think of a polite way to say that he doesn’t give a _shit_ about Kirk right now, not after what he has been through over the past twenty-four hours, imagining Chekov sucked into a freezing, oxygen-less void, but Chekov’s eyes unexpectedly fill with tears and are streaming down his face so silently that Sulu’s first thought is that it must be raining. But no, it is a quiet but deliberate kind of misery, the kind Sulu hasn’t seen on Chekov’s face in years. Not since they lost Spock’s mother on Vulcan all that time ago.

 

“The keptin was dead. He died—fixing the warp core,” says Chekov, his voice hauntingly steady.

 

Sulu has to stop himself from raising a hand to his mouth, from reacting as instinctively and viscerally as his body demands. “Kirk—he’s dead?”

 

Chekov shakes his head, just once. “They are reviving him now, with Khan’s regenerative blood.” He blinks just once and another stream of tears spills down his cheeks. “But he almost died. Almost. Because I could not fix the warp core. Because I failed.”

 

Sulu is rooted to the spot, staring at Chekov in disbelief. “No—no, Pavel, that’s bullshit. The warp core was tampered with before we even left central, that had nothing to _do_ with you—”

 

“If I were better, I could have fixed it,” says Chekov in resolve. There is none of the trembling and the uncertainty of his last grave mistake, when he was seventeen and his world was falling apart and it seemed so simple for Sulu to swoop in and pick up the pieces. Now there is a dark edge to his tone, a comfortless one. “You know it is true. If Mister Scott had been down there, he would have found a way to fix it, and all those people would have _lived_ —”

 

“That’s not true,” Sulu interrupts. “It isn’t your fault. You know that. You _have_ to know that.”

 

Chekov’s eyes are hard on his, and they are answer enough.

 

“Jesus, Pavel,” Sulu breathes. “Just—come with me. You can’t be out here like this. You probably need a doctor or something, look at yourself—”

 

“I am fine.”

 

“No, you’re not, because you’re spewing total crap—where are you _going?_ ”

 

Chekov does not stop or turn around. “I am going to my quarters and collecting my things.”

 

“Collecting your—what?” Sulu has to run to catch up with Chekov’s surprisingly determined strides. “What is that supposed to mean?”

 

“I am resigning.” There is no room for compromise in his voice. It feels as if he has stopped in his tracks and sucker-punched Sulu without a shred of hesitation or regret.

 

It takes a moment for Sulu to recover from the shock of it. “No, you’re not,” he splutters. “You can’t resign.”

 

Chekov is ignoring him now, walking as if he hasn’t heard Sulu’s protestations at all. “Hey,” says Sulu roughly, grabbing him arm to stop him. Chekov’s skinny frame jerks at the impact. “Listen—”

 

“My inability to perform my duties led to the deaths of dozens of innocent people,” says Chekov, his voice raised, his cheeks flushed and his eyes red-rimmed with grief. “They will strip me of my duties regardless, and if they do not, then I will still know that I do not deserve to be here. I must resign. It would be a dishonor to those who died to do anything less.” 

 

Then he shakes off Sulu’s grip on his arm and continues walking.

 

“For fuck’s sake, Pavel,” Sulu calls after him. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t everything you could have done, even Scotty couldn’t have fixed it, it was _deliberate sabotage_.”

 

Chekov still won’t look at him.

 

“Don’t do this. Starfleet needs you.” _I need you_ , he is thinking, but he shouldn’t have to say that. It is more than implied. It is a conscious and screaming fact, and it makes him all the more furious that Chekov can just up and walk away from him, when Sulu thought that they meant more to each other than that.

 

Sulu isn’t following him anymore, just standing in the street in disbelief as Chekov gets further and further away, to a place where Sulu can’t reach him. He isn’t expecting Chekov to abruptly turn the corner, out of his sight. Once he is gone, Sulu still cannot find the proper words or motivation to collect himself. He wants to run after him, wants to argue and scream and find some way to work this out, but he knows Chekov, and he knows that cold and absolute look in his eye.

 

He hates himself for not having the power to change Chekov’s mind. For not being important enough, or loved enough. He hates that Chekov can walk away from him this easily after everything they’ve been through, over something that was out of their control.

 

“God dammit,” Sulu mutters to himself. He thinks it will make him feel better, but it doesn’t. He tries again, kicking a piece of debris, _hard_ , and yelling, “God _dammit_.”

 

His pulse is rushing in his ears. The streets are empty. There is no one to listen to his screams.

 

SSSSS

 

He finds himself sulking in his quarters, drinking out of miniature bottles of liquor he has collected from traveling over the years but never had a reason to use. It’s a cliché, one he has never really experimented with before, but he has nothing to do and nobody he wants to see or talk about this with, so he drinks, thinking maybe it will solve something. It doesn’t.

 

There’s a knock on his door.

 

“Who is it?”

 

“Nyota.”

 

He is so devastatingly disappointed that he almost tells her to get out.

 

“Hikaru?” she asks, her voice soft when there isn’t any response.

 

“Hold on,” he says gruffly, pressing a button on his PADD to swing the door open and let her in.

 

She looks like a wreck. It is rare to see a hair out of place on Uhura’s head, but now there is dirt and grime and tears mingling with mascara streaked down her face, and her too-tight ponytail is in hopeless knots around her neck. She is staring at him, taking in the sight of him and the empty mini bottles with a similar pity in her eyes, probably thinking what a wreck he looks like, too.

 

“Where have you been,” he asks gruffly.

 

She stands halfway between him and the doorway. “With Kirk,” she says. Before Sulu can ask, she says quietly, “Dr. McCoy is confident he will recover. But it could take some time. Weeks, even.”

 

Sulu nods, processing this. “And Khan?”

 

“Frozen, with his friends. Spock saw to it himself.” 

 

Sulu’s fingers are itching for another one of the bottles, just so he has something to do with his hands, something to make himself look busy so she can’t see the weakness in him. Instead he reaches for his face, his hands dragging down the sagged skin. “This whole thing is unbelievable.”

 

“I talked to Pavel,” she says, not even bothering to agree with him.

 

Sulu scowls. “When?”

 

“Just now.”

 

“He let you in?” Sulu asks, unable to conceal the ugly resentment stirring in his gut.

 

Her voice is mild and forgiving. “After awhile.”

 

“He’s leaving,” says Sulu. The words are bitter on his tongue. It makes him want to kick something again. He looks at her, daring her to imply that she knows Chekov better than he does. “He won’t be talked out of it.”

 

Uhura bites her lip. “I convinced him to stay until Kirk wakes up.”

 

“Oh.” Sulu wonders why he didn’t think of that himself. “And you think that Kirk will be able to magically fix this and talk him out of it, then.”

 

“I believe if anyone can, Kirk can.”

 

Sulu stands up abruptly, turning his back to her and stalking over to the window. “Of course,” he says. He is aware of how infantile he sounds, but he doesn’t care. “Of course _Kirk_ could get him to stay.”

 

“You know it’s not like that,” says Uhura, in that practical and soothing way of hers. “You know he cares about you, and you know you shouldn’t have to be told that.”

 

“Then how can he be so dismissive of me?” Sulu demands. “I ask him to stay, I ask him to listen and it’s like I count for _nothing_.”

 

“You have to understand. He’s ashamed. He told me he was too ashamed to look at you.”

 

“That’s ridiculous,” Sulu counters. “I’m the one who is there for him no matter what. I always have been. That’s _ridiculous_.”

 

For a few moments Uhura doesn’t say anything, and Sulu tries to even his breathing, tries to slow his furiously beating heart. When he turns to look at her there is a sad and patient look in her eyes, like she is waiting for him to understand. But he doesn’t want to. Everything is out of his control now, and their peaceful and well-constructed little world is dissolving around them. Forget the five year mission. Forget everything they ever dreamed and hoped and planned. Chekov is leaving, and they are going to war.

 

“Give him some time,” says Uhura gently. He can tell without looking at her that she is heading toward the door. “He cares about you, Hikaru. Believe me. It’s just that—sometimes we have to remind ourselves that—that the people who care about us most are the worst at showing it.”

 

A few moments later the door slides shut. Sulu turns and stares out at his empty room after she leaves, and hopes for everyone’s sake that she is right.

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
